As mentioned previously it isn't a lack of hockey smarts that is hurting Hodgson ... he's pretty terribly immobile at the NHL level. He's at his most dangerous within like 10 feet of the opponents net where he can use his shot and hands, but he looks like a slug in open ice.

It's not so much that Hodgson has bad positioning it is simply that he can not skate well enough or accelerate well enough to keep his positioning. His defensive game because of it is, to be frank, bad. He's going to find his icetime dropping if he doesn't pick it up on the defensive side of things.

I was watching the Buff/Car game a few days ago & Skinner was skating past him like it was nothing.

As mentioned previously it isn't a lack of hockey smarts that is hurting Hodgson ... he's pretty terribly immobile at the NHL level. He's at his most dangerous within like 10 feet of the opponents net where he can use his shot and hands, but he looks like a slug in open ice.

But it also looks like his motor isn't going either. So not only is he limited physically from being much faster, he also doesn't move with intent.

Phaneuf is underrated. He's better defensively than he "appears". Would I want him on this team? Tough call given past attitude issues. If they thought he could buy in, sure. If not, probably best to pass.

I wouldn't pay him his contract on the Canucks, just because I don't think his added value (even if he finds his game) is necessarily something the Canucks need. But he'd look great on a top pair in TO if they had a Hamhuis or Garrison or Willie Mitchell to play with him.

I was watching the Buff/Car game a few days ago & Skinner was skating past him like it was nothing.

Yeah. He was awful that game on the defenswive side of things. On the ice for 5 goals against or something. 2 were completely his fault and he didn't help out much on the others.

He needs to work extremely hard on his skating or he is going to find it hard to get beyond the second line on mediocre teams. Right now he gets by on offensive promise but at some point that will end and he'll have to perform.

I actually think Dion Phaneuf is underrated these days. He's a good defenseman with elite physical tools. I think his problem in Toronto -- especially this season -- is that they have done a miserable job of building a defense around him. Why is Kosta playing 32 minutes last night with Phaneuf?

The Leafs needed in the worst way to overpay a guy like Garrison or Hamhuis to play on Phaneuf's left side. Phaneuf is a wildly more talented Kevin Bieksa: give him someone to make the safe play/cover for him, and Phaneuf could be a really important, rare piece in the NHL. He has a Shea Weber toolset; not as good, of course, but he could be close.

Just your typical lack of Burke management, really. Burke always gets a lot right but he's always too stubborn to "overpay" for a necessary piece, even if it's something his team desperately needs, making an overpayment reasonable. Literally the only time Burke has even been willing to do this is when it's a sure-fire guy available (Niedermayer types). When he finally did, with Kessel, he screwed it up by being too stubborn to make an offer sheet.

Well, you aren't alone in that assessment. Tiranis and I have butted heads over this very same issue. And the Leaf fan base seems pretty evenly split on the Love/Hate continuum as well (as was the Flame base).

I think Dion is a guy with a great skill set but just an astoundingly low hockey IQ. Because of the skill set, he sometimes puts it together for a great play (or hit, or shot, etc.) but he makes so many bad reads, and makes them entirely too frequently.

With the amount of ice time he gets...something like 32 minutes last night...these mistakes seem to crop up more often. And with TML being at the sbolute center of the universe, these mistakes get noticed and talked about.

He might be a good 3/4 guy but we'll just never know because (A) he is on said Leafs and they have a pretty weak D corps and (B) I don't think he sees himself as anything less than Top Dog.

more and more Buffalo fans are getting over the Hodgson honeymoon phase and calling him out for his defensive coverage.

Sounds like a few of them are getting fed up with how Kassian has been playing & how much we've enjoyed him.

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On the topic of Kassian ... I really think a good portion of Sabres fans here no longer really want to hear about Kassian. Good or bad.

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I'm not trying to come off like a jerk (but probably am to some) but the majority really honestly don't care about Kassian anymore. But it suuuure seems like many Canucks fans love coming to the Sabres boards to type their opinion of Kassian and/or Hodgson here.

Maybe Foligno's play has a little to do with this too?

I know we get on Hodgson (last page is PRIME example) I just don't think people understand the hype that this guy was given (especially his character) how he was viewed here, the fact he's one of a small sample of Canuck draft picks playing & who he was compared with. Its no wonder that we have an interest in what he does (bitter or not).

Through 4 games, Hodgson's offensive zone start was only 50% at ES, which seems lower than it should be for a player of his ilk. And his team's on-ice SV% is a ridiculously low .850 at ES. Even the worst players in the league defensively won't cause that kind of save percentage.

He's just getting a bit of bad luck defensively, though his team is shooting 15% when he's on the ice. Just one of those things. I think people are over-extrapolating here. He's a guy that clearly needs some work defensively, but this is an aberration. That or he's going to have a career as a ridiculously high-event player

Through 4 games, Hodgson's offensive zone start was only 50% at ES, which seems lower than it should be for a player of his ilk. And his team's on-ice SV% is a ridiculously small .850 at ES. Even the worst players in the league defensively won't cause that kind of save percentage.

He's just getting a bit of bad luck defensively, though his team is shooting 15% when he's on the ice. Just one of those things. I think people are over-extrapolating here.

This seems like a strange place to bring up stats when by watching him you can see that he's at fault for close to a half of the goals that have been scored against his team. Bad luck would be him being on the ice at all the wrong times, meanwhile he's on the ice and directly causing goals against. These aren't just minor mistakes either, he left Ward completely unmarked in front of the net and then deflected another puck right into his own net. 50% offensive zone starts are perfectly fine, nothing wrong with that. Sedins are an anomaly in this league.

The stats in terms of GA weren't much better through the 20 games he spent in Buffalo last season.